I hit a giant crater about a week ago and the alignment got knocked out all to hell. It also screwed up the tie rods, and I had to hold the steering wheel at like 35* to the left to keep the car straight.

So I called up my friend Justin who works at a dealership. He scheduled me in for an alignment for $28.91. Usually it's $28.91 just to get the car on the alignment rack, and they charge $80 bucks an hour for adjustment.

Justin spent two and a half hours on my car, and meticulously dialed in the alignment. :worship: (By the way, the manager there now hates me )

The car is now set at zero toe all around, -1.3 degrees of camber in each front, and -1.7 degrees in each rear. Zero toe should yield a little bit of positive toe while driving due to the road force, thus it should help with turn-in and rotating.

The biggest thing was the steering wheel. I've asked the dealership to fix it (it was like that since day one), had Belle Tire align it, and nobody ever fixed it. They charged 90 bucks each, and I realized how big of a JOKE they were. They hadn't done crap. Justin fixed it in about 10 minutes flat. Now my car actually goes straight with a straight wheel.

Bottom line is, I realized that alignments are as big of a scam as the windshield replacement industry. Most of the times, they throw the car on the rack, and if it falls within the wide-ass factory spec range, they just say it's okay. And they take your $90 dollars... twice.

 

Was told by my brother who is a mechanic that a lot of alignment racks are not aligned properly. So in otherwords you just made bad/ worse... . Always ask before you have an alignment done is the rack was recently checked...

 

2 1/2 hours on alignment! Were you driving drunk again?

Hey Rob, I'm assuming your car is lowered, and that you brought it in to an Acura dealership? So that means they have in-ground lifts (the ones that can accommodate low ground clearance cars) right?

My TL is barely lowered, and with a kit, and everywhere I bring it in for an alignment, the car can't get on the lift (car would seesaw on the sideskirt on the lift). But then I figured Acura would have to occasionally align NSX's, so it shouldn't be a problem with any car at the dealership.

I don't think I really need one, but I'm getting new tires soon, so couldn't hurt to check.

Roger

 

Just had my alignment checked at Tire Barn Wheel Warehouse....cost...$60......I recently ran though a large hole when a truck forced me off the highway and bent a rim....replaced rim....then a week later had alignment checked. Was within specs still! They charged me nothing and it took them less than 20 minutes too. I was thrilled! He tells me that usually these types of things usually dont knock the car out of specs unless you bend something on the 3G TL's anyway. What a fair place though....no charge. Figure that!

 

thats odd my car is dropped considerably, and i have the oem kit, i get my car right up on the rack, no problems, if they cant get you on without hitting the rack on the front, theyll usually put some boards down so you dotn scrape

 

It was a Hunter Engineering alignment rack. The front lip scraped, but the rest of the car cleared it fine. But we were down to like millimeters as it was getting on the rack... the car almost high-centered.

2.5 hours, because he was being extremely meticulous. He actually double and triple checked everything.

 

ya all you should have to do is get some shoring and place it infront of the lift. thats what we had to do to get my friends skyline on the rack.

 

back in 2001 i hit a blackbear cub (not a typo) with my taurus SHO and bent the piss out of the strut assembly and i still believe the steering rack too (although the mechanic said the rack was fine but the car never aligned completely straight again, and i used to get all sorts of noises when i would turn the wheel to the right). had to keep the wheel turned all the way clockwise to drive straight for the next 80 miles home. that sucked.

SSTS

 

Dang, that's way worse than me.

How big was the cub??